


For My Girls

by gabapple, mamodewberry



Series: NLAverse [20]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Baby Katsuki Yuuri, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Family Feels, Gen, Jealous Nishigori, NLA Canon, Primadonna, The Goblin Trio, Yuko the Minx
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 05:03:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18403661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabapple/pseuds/gabapple, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamodewberry/pseuds/mamodewberry
Summary: It's story time with Yuko and the triplets as a photo album takes the Nishigori family on a trip through the Princess of Ice Castle Hasetsu's past.





	For My Girls

**Author's Note:**

> Gabapple: Hi there! This was a piece that Mamo and I did for the Primadonna Zine, which was made in an effort to raise awareness of and to help fund the research for the prevention and treatment of breast cancer. As someone who had cancer herself and also lost a parent to breast cancer, this project was very close to my heart... I'm extremely grateful to Mamo for being willing to make time to write this extremely sweet piece despite her busy, busy schedule. She did a wonderful job, as always, and I loved illustrating the story that she came up with. Thank you, my waifu. <3
> 
> Thanks also to the Primadonna staff for putting this all together, channeling their own hardships into something so positive, to all of our fellow contributors who made this such a beautiful zine, and to those who bought the zine and/or donated to the cause. :')
> 
> Mamodewberry: When I saw apps go up, I knew I wanted to do a piece about Yuko. We love her. A lot. I've written very small scenes of her before, but her as the focus was a bit of a challenge and I changed my original idea to what you see here and it turned out really cute. I lost my grandmother to breast cancer, so I really wanted to contribute!
> 
> Thank you for illustrating, my waifu. It was fun to collab on another zine <3

* * *

 

 

 

“Hey Mom! Did you ever want to be a pro figure skater?”

Yuko untied her apron and hung it on the hook in the kitchen. She followed her girls’ voices into the living room to find them sitting on the couch with an old photo album propped across their laps. “Sometimes.”

“I sense a story.”

“A tragic backstory!”

“A life on the ice or life of love?”

 

 

For a moment she considered it. They weren’t far off about love versus the ice. But if she admitted that from the get go, would they have the attention span to get the full story?

Probably not.

“It wasn’t a dream I let go of so lightly.”

Successfully baited, the girls made way for their mother to join them on the couch - Axel and Lutz on one side, Loop on the other.

“When I was your age, I was the Princess of Ice Castle Hasetsu.” Yuko flipped to the beginning, opening the heavy cover to the first page of the photo album, her six-year-old self shown in a sequential spin. “I hated taking my skates off at the end of the day. Your grandparents had to come up with a lot of reasons why I couldn’t skate all the time.”

“Like how your feet would fall off from your ankles?”

“That’s what you’d tell us.”

“Sounds like something Grandma would have told you!”

She laughed. “You know her well… But just as you girls are so smart, so was I. Just when I caught on that losing my feet wasn’t possible, they gave me a pair of ballet slippers instead.”

“A crafty diversion.”

“So that’s where we get it from.”

“Yep. She’s exactly who I blame,” she sighed and took a moment to ruffle the tops of their heads. “Stop interrupting, girls.”

“Sorry, sorry …”

“Ahem. Ballet slippers. I thought they were super cute, so it wasn’t too hard to sway me as you can see by the smile on my face in these photos.” A young Yuko held a pair of slippers up to her parents, another testing on her toes.

 

 

“Oh look, it’s obasan.”

“She never ages.”

“Sure doesn’t!”

“You better not let Minako-sensei hear you call her that, girls. She convinced me that ballet would help me skate better by showing me old pictures of skaters that also took ballet. And that’s why I have you girls take lessons with oba-- I mean, Minako-sensei.”

The girls snickered at their mother’s slip-up. When her girls were right, they were right!

“With her lessons, I really did get better! I thought I was going to be the next Midori Ito! I grew up watching so many other Japanese women go to the Olympics, it was so inspiring.

“There weren’t a lot of kids my age growing up, so it was really easy for me to lose myself in skating. The girls in my ballet class were all older, so they didn’t have much interest in me. I used to think Mari was the coolest. Well, she still is.”

Her daughters glanced at the pages she turned to. Leotards, ballet slippers with tutus and then tutus again, but this time with skates. A young Mari with some other girls the triplets couldn’t identify.

“Yuuri!” they exclaimed at once and pointed to a smaller, rounder Yuuri.

“Wow, I’m surprised he could even get on his toes.”

“Naturally chubby.”

“So determined!”

“Girls! Be nice to Yuuri-kun. He worked - and still works - really hard to keep in shape for competition. It’s not like your father is much better.”

“Dad is big boned.”

“Husky.”

“There’s a difference.”

Yuko rolled her eyes and turned to a photo of the three childhood friends messing around on the barre after they’d become friends. She’d hoped the image would prove her point, but the girls said nothing. “You three really do take after him, both in physique and bullying Yuuri-kun.”

“He just makes it so easy.”

Yuko sighed again, pausing at the photos of them in their ballet gear, at school, and at the park. “If my parents hadn’t brought me to ballet that day, I don’t know if I’d have become friends with these two. Being in different grades, we didn’t see each other much at school. Skating and ballet connected us.”

“Dad says you dated a lot in high school.”

“Much to his jealousy.”

“Heartbreaker.”

 

 

“T-That was high school! Don’t skip ahead, girls. I’m glad those boys eventually became friends. All that bullying Takeshi did was just looking out for Yuuri-kun. If your father were really that cruel, I probably wouldn’t have fallen for him. Anyway-” Yuko turned the page to her holding a trophy. “I started to compete in skating. Youth divisions, small-time regional-type things. I won a lot of awards. I kept up with ballet, too.

“And then in middle school, Viktor Nikiforov gained popularity. I loved his long hair and his beautiful costumes and elegant and vibrant presence. I dreamed about wearing his costumes. See? I even doodled it.”

“Mom is not an artist.”

“Gold star for effort.”

“We’ll give you some lessons.”

“You’re all so thoughtful…” Yuko ran a hand over the laminated pencil scribble she’d done in class many years ago. The wishing star costume, the one Yurio had chosen for the Hasetsu competition. It wasn’t a bad drawing, she could still tell what it was, but if she were a better artist, she’d have added a diamond tiara.

 

 

“So when did Yuuri fall head over heels?”

“With Mom or Viktor?”

“With Viktor, of course! Wait, did he ever have a crush on you, Mom?”

“I wondered sometimes, especially with how he and Takeshi bickered, but as soon as I introduced him to Viktor he was wide-eyed and attentive, there was no way he was interested in me.”

“Or anyone,” they snickered together.

She couldn't help but smile fondly. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m so glad he was able to truly fall in love with his crush and now they are together. I have to admit, I’m a little pleased with myself for introducing him to his soulmate in a way. I helped cultivate those feelings with him. I admired Viktor of course, but it was never with the same levels as Yuuri-kun. It was only natural that I convinced Yuuri-kun that he should skate professionally so he could skate with Viktor.”

“But you didn’t want to go pro?”

“He went on in your place?”

“Is this where the backstory gets _tragic_?”

“Between skating and ballet... my grades weren’t doing the best. If I went pro, I would have had to have stopped ballet and work harder with skating and hire a professional coach. But if my grades weren’t good, my parents would never let me. And with them getting older, it was harder for them to keep up with the ice rink. They needed my help. I couldn’t be traveling half the year away from home. Before I could really starting picturing myself on the international stage, I pushed Yuuri-kun towards it instead. He had the grades and stamina to do something like that.

“It was hard at first to accept that I couldn’t go further with my dreams, but being dubbed the Primadonna of Ice Castle had a great ring to it. I was still ruler of a castle and had my own kind of fame. A smaller scale, but it was good enough.

“And then during my senior year of high school - yes, after dating others - your father proposed to me. In the end, I think it was fate that I didn’t go pro. If I had, who knows if I would have married and had you girls. Some things are more important.”

The girls exchanged glances with one another, then replied in varying degrees of disappointment.

“Way to get sappy, Mom.”

“Yeah, geez.”

“And leave out the juicy details of your dating life.”

“I wasn’t being sappy, I was being sentimental!”

“What’s the difference?”

She supposed there wasn’t. It was too late to make up a more riveting story for them. Taking the photo album off of their laps, she closed it and rested it on the side table to pull all three girls into her arms the best she could. “To answer your question; yes, I did once want to be a professional figure skater, but as I got older, I found someone that needed it more than I did and also someone that needed me more than the world did. My life is still about skating. I take care of the rink and I skate with your girls when I can and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. I’m not winning any medals, I guess, but… you girls are my medals.”

Once more the sisters looked at each other, scrunching their noses at their mother’s confession, debating if her answer was acceptable. A few more beats and they nodded, eyes glistening as they looked up at her. “Are we all gold or…?”

Touched that her meaning finally reached them, she kissed each of their foreheads. “Of course you are.”

 


End file.
